kly; "there are just a few things a
fellow learns out here. One is not to apologize; and another is not
to beg. Sit down." There were two white boulders beside which the
trickle of water rippled. Obeying him, she seated herself. Presently
Dan Anderson settled himself upon the other, and for a time they sat
in silence. The purple shadows had long ago deepened into half
darkness, and as they looked up above the long, slow curve of old
Carrizo, there rose the burnished silver of the wondrous moon of
Heart's Desire. The bare and barren valley was softened and glorified
into a strange, half-ghostly beauty. The earth has few scenes more
beautiful than Heart's Desire at moonlight. These two sat and gazed
for a time.

"And so this is your world!" the girl spoke at length, more to herself
than to him.

"Yes," he replied almost savagely, sweeping his hand toward the
mountain-rimmed horizon. "Yes, it's mine."

"It is very beautiful," she murmured softly.

"Yes," said Dan Anderson, "it's beautiful. Some time there'll be a
man who'll learn something in such a place as this. I don't know but
I've learned a little bit myself in the last few years."

"The years!" she whispered to herself.

"It seems forever," said he. "The time when a fellow's taking his
medicine always seems long, I reckon, I have almost forgotten my life
of five years ago--almost, except a part of it. It's been another
world here. Nothing matters much, does it?"

Whether there was now bitterness or softness in his speech she could
not tell, but she found no reproach for herself in word or tone.

"Look," said she at length, pointing down at the valley of Heart's
Desire, now bathed in the full flood of the unveiled moonlight.
"Look! It is unspeakable."

He looked at her face instead. "I've seen you right here," he said,
"right at this very place, a thousand times. It's Eden. It's the
Garden. It's the Beginning."

"It is the world," she whispered vaguely.

"Yes, yes--" Words burst from his lips beyond his power to control.
"It is Eden, it is Paradise, but a vacant Eden, a Paradise incomplete.
Constance--"

The girl felt herself shiver at this sound of a voice which all too
often these past five years had come to her unbidden when she found
moments of self-communion in her own restless and dissatisfied life.
Walls had not shut it out, music had not drowned it, gayety had not
served to banish it. She had heard it in her subjective sou